Understanding Resignation: The Racialisation of Routine Policing

Abstract

Race relations are a source of intransigent trouble for the British police. Invariably testing and contentious, the assumptions underpinning the police scrutiny of race may be negative. Perceived as thrusting a challenge at the legitimate social order, as representing an unprovoked expression of resentment, as unnecessarily judgmental and as an imposition too frequently visited upon officers, the exegetes of ‘race’ are viewed sceptically or dismissed summarily. Although a great deal of wasted rhetoric and drama can indeed typify much of the posturing that surrounds the discussion of police race relations, and remembering that relationships between officers and the members of minority ethnic groups are not always tense, this sceptical view is inadequate (Smith, 1986).